December 11, 2006

Speed or Quality?

Martin: Two different AP stories recently hinted at something important about technology, communication and social media. Placing the two stories side by side and reading them pulls out a theme. Some of us are communicating faster, but not necessarily better.

The first story, "Business, B-Schools Fight Bad Writing," focuses on businesses and business schools bemoaning poor writing by students. The blame? Nonstop e-mail, IMing and text messaging. The second point out the obvious gap between boomer and the younger generation. Boomers prefer e-mail younger people prefer IM.

Part of the problem, however, seems to be the illusion that faster and even multiple conversations are productive. The instantaneous of the message and the ability to respond means that we don't always handle the communication opportunity well. Who's not received or sent and email that shouldn't have been? For companies this can be a big problem, especially if they are ever involved in a legal discovery. Lawyers have a way of taking innocent mistakes and building cases on them.

At least email prevents multitasking conversations pointed out in the second story, "Teens, Adults Separated by IM Gap." The illusion here is that we can conduct a half a dozen conversations at once without the other parties knowing. But what happens is to stay on top of six conversations we just toss statements out there without really understanding the content or context of each conversation.